© Frederik Heyman ‘A General of Beauty’, that’s how the Flemish artist Jan Fabre was described in an article in the yearbook The Low Countries. Fabre’s artistic development is quintessentially organic: during his studies, he not only produced his first theatre texts and his first visual work, but also gave performances. From the very start Fabre was an artist who strives for freedom, who continually explores his own limitations and attempts to push them back. ‘Multidisciplinary’ is an understatement when talking about his oeuvre: entire buildings covered with blue ballpoint drawings, a bronze sculpture of a man who measures the clouds, gowns made from beetles, a giant bug stuck on a 7 foot steel needle and performers who push themselves to every possible physical limit…it’s all Fabre.
This exploration of limits goes hand in hand with a keen fascination for metamorphosis and transformation. That’s bound to cause a stir now and then, like with his recent installation Spring is on its Way in the Antwerp Muhka. Scheduled to run until the start of spring 2009, it consists of condoms filled with onions and potatoes hanging from the ceiling. But transformation comes at an olfactory price, and local media already have reported that many visitors and even museum guards protested against the smelly spring art: spring is in the air, but not in a totally good way. Some eight years ago Jan Fabre covered some university pillars in Ghent in ham and understandably after a while the natives got restless there too.
Jan Fabre's Spring is on its Way, or as the Sydney Morning Herald put it:
'One man's stink is another man's major art project.'
So, all in all, it is not one bit surprising that The New York Times labeled Fabre’s work as rife with ‘truly surprising provocative imagery.’ Yet the agent provocateur is also a sacred monster. Art-critically sacred, as is obvious from the fact that last year he had the prestigious The Angel of Metamorphosis show at the venerable Musée du Louvre in Paris, but also royally sacred. Commissioned by his admirer Queen Paola, he covered the ceiling of the hall of mirrors of the Brussel’s royal palace with 1,4 billion scarab’s carapaces.
Fabre also has his own theatre company, Troubleyn, known for its ‘extensive international operations’. A bit like the CIA then, but much less covert. Troubleyn is embarking this January on its Orgy of Tolerance, in which Jan Fabre ‘delves into the very hole of the world, sinking, like a speleologist, ever deeper into the belly of existence, to examine all that rumbles and ferments in its depths’. The orgy in the title refers to the ecstasy of consumption, a digestive mechanism that holds everyone of us in its clutches. According to critic Luk Van den Dries Fabre paints a panorama of tolerance as a deriding caricature and satirical caption of our young 21st century with musicians, dancers and actors: ‘The most famous predecessor in that form of painful comedy is Monty Python. Their hilariously absurd sketches rub salt into our wounds.’ Just like the Pythons Fabre exposes and undermines the mechanisms of our collective illusion and pricks the bubble of instant gratification.
‘Everything’s available / And when I say everything / I mean each and everything / You'd ever imagine…’ run the lyrics of Dag Taeldeman, who wrote the music to go with the orgy which will, among many other places, descend upon London, Seattle and Montreal (see calendar here). But first up is the Garden State, and more particularly Montclair State University, NJ, the place to be on 22 January for the US premiere of this ‘absurd wink at the world of excess’, as Van den Dries calls it.
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